Most relevant to my work with you, I have been a Respecting Choices® Certified Advance Care Planning Facilitator since February 2017 and have been facilitating Mindful Endings workshops since 2019. Much of my prior training and life experience make me uniquely qualified to guide you as you complete your directives:
I am a master educator with extensive experience in curriculum development and content delivery spanning early childhood through university education. I have prepared and presented workshops at international conferences. I have expertise in transforming research findings into personal practices that enhance the quality of individual lives and support healthy families and communities.
I am a certified life coach and Restorative Justice facilitator. I am passionate about creating trustworthy spaces for deep, meaningful, generative conversations that expand our thinking and our belief in what is possible.
I accompanied my mother through her dying process in 2012, staying at her hospital bedside for six days and nights without any social-emotional support, knowledge of her wishes, or authority to direct her care. While it was comforting to be there for her and hold her hand when she took her last breath, my grief and trauma were amplified by lack of preparation for this event. Since my mom’s death, I have been on a mission to learn what it means to prepare for a good death.
I completed Transformational Coach certification with the Blue Mesa Group in 2014, and have been self-employed as a personal coach since that time.
In 2015, I began volunteering with Pathways of Northern Colorado as a hospice companion. Each hospice patient I’ve accompanied has contributed to my understanding of death and the dying process in significant ways. I am indebted to each of them for sharing with me one of the most profound experiences of their lives. This gift helps me guide others in discerning what it means to die well and continues to enhance the quality of my days.
My husband, Joe, and I completed our advance directives in January 2017 with a neighborhood writing group that I initiated. In October of that year, Joe was diagnosed with an advance and aggressive form of cancer. (See Teri’s Story for more details.) I acted as Joe’s medical agent (MDPOA) and cared for him at home with the help of our daughter Paula, Pathways Hospice, and our neighborhood community. Joe died at home, 10 weeks after his diagnosis, in accordance with the wishes he articulated in his advance directives.
I continue to invest in a daily commitment to build healthy, sustainable communities. I am deeply grounded in the work of Parker Palmer’s Center for Courage and Renewal. I completed the C&R Foundations training in April of 2022, and the C&R Practicum in March of 2023.
I am currently training in the DAWN Method with Judy Cornish‘s Dementia and Alzheimer’s Wellbeing Network. I fully endorse this compassionate, strength-based approach to caring for those with dementia. DAWN offers dementia care training and coaching for caregivers and families.
It is my deepest wish to share what I’ve learned about death and dying – through all these experiences – with you.